June 18, 1999
COMMITTEE ON CONSCIENCE ISSUES STATEMENT ON NEXT STEPS FOR KOSOVO
June 18, 1999 — As NATO forces enter Kosovo, the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council issues the following statement:
“The failure of the international community to confront Hitler’s genocidal policies in a forceful and timely fashion cost millions of innocent lives. Similar inaction and hesitation since the Holocaust have produced untold more innocent victims of regimes intent on the destruction and extermination of other religious, racial, national, or ethnic groups.”
The Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, established to relate the tragic lessons of the Holocaust to contemporary events, therefore notes with approval that the action by the United States and its NATO allies has prevented the Milosevic regime from continuing its genocidal policies of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the horrendous crimes against humanity it visited on the people of Kosovo. The Committee expresses the hope that this action will deter any other regime contemplating similar policies and that the international community, guided by humanitarian concerns, will be prepared henceforth to take appropriate timely steps to prevent and punish such crimes.
The Committee on Conscience also urges that all necessary steps be taken by the United States, its NATO allies, and the United Nations to bring to justice Slobodan Milosevic and all others responsible for the crimes that were committed in Kosovo, to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in its investigations of these crimes, and to make needed financial and professional resources available to the Tribunal as it pursues these objectives.
Deeply moved by the plight of all Kosovo refugees, the Committee on Conscience calls on the international community to provide the support needed to facilitate the speedy return of the refugees to their homes, the reconstruction of Kosovo and the reunification of families.
- Miles Lerman, Chair, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
- Ruth B. Mandel, Vice Chair, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Committee on Conscience:
- Thomas Buergenthal, Chair
- Leonard Abramson
- Diane Asadorian
- Allen I. Bildner
- Lindy Boggs
- Hyman H. Bookbinder
- Joseph A. Cannon
- Stephen L. Carter
- Robert S. Coles
- Robert J. Dole
- Kitty Dukakis
- Joel L. Fleishman
- Harold Gershowitz
- Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk
- Hanna Holborn Gray
- Rabbi Irving Greenberg
- Richard C. Holbrooke
- Ming Chen Hsu
- Max M. Kampelman
- Jan Karski
- C. Everett Kopp
- John F. Kordek
- Ben Zion Leuchter
- Robert Jay Lifton
- Deborah E. Lipstadt
- Rev. Hubert G. Locke
- Lynn Lyss
- Jewell Jackson McCabe
- Benjamin Meed
- Leo Melamed
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Rev. John T. Pawlikowski
- Jehuda Reinharz
- Menachem Z. Rosensaft
- Henry Rosovsky
- Dennis Ross
- Rabbi Arthur Schneier
- George D. Schwab
- Jerome J. Shestack
- Lawrence M. Small
- H. Patrick Swygert
- Mark E. Talisman
- Arnold Thaler
